Listen to a composite and unique view on startups and technology, based on the hosts’ inherited past

This podcast provides unique view of both the creation and growth of startups as well as different technology topics thanks to the background of its hosts: Martin “Gonto” Gontovnikas has focused his career as VP of Growth & Marketing at product companies like Auth0, and Guido is Director of Innovation and co-founder of Wolox, a design and development studio.

This is the second part of the improve internal communication and collaboration episode. Please check the first episode first, if you haven't already

If your company is going through exponential growth and doubling size every year, creating and keeping alignment across the growing organization becomes really hard.

In this 2 part episode we’ll discuss different strategies and tactics that both Wolox and Auth0 implemented to improve internal communications and cross team collaboration.

We’ll first talk about how to create alignment across the organization between your different departments. We’ll focus on OKRs, creating a global list of projects and processes, fostering empathy between departments and sharing point of contacts.

We’ll then dive into the 2 different types of content your organization creates: ephemeral content which is needed to drive discussions and reach to conclusions and lasting contents where you save the decisions and things your team needs to understand as it grows.

Lastly, we’re going to discuss which is the right meeting cadence that’s needed to drive effective cross department collaboration.

If your company is going through exponential growth and doubling size every year, creating and keeping alignment across the growing organization becomes really hard.

In this 2 part episode we’ll discuss different strategies and tactics that both Wolox and Auth0 implemented to improve internal communications and cross team collaboration.

We’ll first talk about how to create alignment across the organization between your different departments. We’ll focus on OKRs, creating a global list of projects and processes, fostering empathy between departments and sharing point of contacts.

We’ll then dive into the 2 different types of content your organization creates: ephemeral content which is needed to drive discussions and reach to conclusions and lasting contents where you save the decisions and things your team needs to understand as it grows.

Lastly, we’re going to discuss which is the right meeting cadence that’s needed to drive effective cross department collaboration.

In this episode we’ll talk about what transparency is, and how you can apply it in a succesful way in your organization. We’re going to share some of the pitfalls we’ve both had as we implemented it with some solutions.

In this episode we’ll be talking about how to improve the interactions between the design/ux org and the rest of the organization. We’ll be sharing different problems that came up as Auth0 and Wolox scaled and solutions that were implemented.

We’ll first start with a sum up of the genesis and evolution of the design/ux org in Wolox and Auth0.

One of the first problems that both companies experienced was about focus. When you have small design team, should they focus on Product or Marketing?

Sometimes, designers have 2 bosses: their head of design and the lead of the team that they belonged to. The head of design gives the designer one task, and the lead of the team gives them another. Which one should they take? In the second section, we’ll learn how to deal with this problem.

At both Auth0 and Wolox, at some point in time, design was a bottleneck for shipping some projects. In the third section, we’ll learn how to tackle that issue.

In the fourth section, we’ll learn how to move design from being “order takers” to being included earlier in the creation process.

In the fifth and last section, we’ll discuss whether it’s better to have a centralized design team or have design resources spread across the organization.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about how learning evolves throughout the years. At first, when you’re a junior marketer/developer, you’re like a sponge trying to learn every new shiny things. But is that good for your whole career? Does that change? How? In this episode, we’re going to try to answer those questions!

We’ll first talk about hypes. At first, we always want to learn the latest hype and use it. What happens when you want to use that hype in “production”? How much time and effort was put into that hype? Is it something short without much research? Is it proven?

Secondly, we’re going to talk about clickbait titles. The web is now flooded of posts like “The 5 things you need to know for SEO” or “The 3 most popular techniques to call an API”. Is it worth to continue reading them? How can we choose wisely?

We’re in the era of Information, or as Homo Deus calls it, we’re becoming Dataists. In the third section, we’re going to discuss about how to differentiate information from noise and some techniques to do so.

Finally, we’re going to close with a sum up of all of the sections above giving a guide on when it’s good to learn?

We’ve separated this episode into 4 sections. In each of them we’ll be explaining different issues that might arise when you move from being an individual contributor (IC) to both a manager as well as a manager of managers. In each section, Guido and Gonto will be sharing some of the solutions they’ve found that worked for them, as well as some examples of both good habits as well as fuck ups.

When you’re an IC, you have full control of (mostly) everything you do. When you’re a manager, that’s no longer true. In the first section, we’ll talk about a few solutions for this.

When you’re an IC, you’re the one who ships stuff. When you move to be a manager, your job is to enable people to ship and execute better. In the second section, we’ll share some insights about how to better do this transition

For a company to succeed, you need to both hire people smarter than you as well as hiring for your weaknesses. In the third section, we’ll discuss how to handle this.

Being a manager of ICs is very different from being a manager of managers. Last but not least, we’ll discuss how to do this transition effectively. SPOILER ALERT: we’re still learning this :D